The Third Man (1949)

With the summer finally here (and with more time now available to me) I have decided that I will try my hand at writing some film reviews. I love watching films, making films and intelligently discussing them, so I figured that I should refine my ability to cohesively write about them as well. Here goes.

What is the value of human life? In post-World War II Vienna, the answer seems to be "cheap." However, Carol Reed's film "The Third Man" does not discuss this idea within the context of the brutality of warfare itself, but in terms of a man's sense of morality. Man himself becomes cheap if he is willing to see the lives of fellow human beings as simply a figure on a page or a dollar in his pocket. We love the film's naive hero Holly Martins (incomparably played by Joseph Cotton) because he realizes that morality is much more complex than what is in the westerns novellas he writes; he begins by caring only about the death of his friend Harry Lime, but realizes that he needs to care about so much more. A friend tells Martins, "The world doesn't make any heroes outside of your stories." Maybe he's right. Maybe the world doesn't make heroes. But that doesn't mean Martins shouldn't decide to become one.

Essentially, the film is about Martins, who has come from America to post-war Vienna to find a childhood friend (Lime) who has offered him a job. He arrives to find Lime has been killed in an automobile accident. The British police tell him to forget the whole matter and return to America, warning him that the situation is much more dangerous that Martins is willing to believe. However, something doesn't add up, and eventually Martins concludes that Lime has been murdered. He follows the trail, but it leads him somewhere that everyone warned him not to go. Eventually, Martins must choose a side and come face to face with who his friend truly was: to choose the fierce loyalty of Lime's girlfriend, or to side with the truth. As I watched the film again, a friend suggested that the famous Ferris wheel scene depicts the moral rise and fall of Lime; we look down on the crowd as he does, seeing things from his perspective ("Nobody thinks in terms of human beings. Governments don't. Why should we?"), but ultimately, we end where we began. Nothing has changed.

As an artist, whenever I see a photographer who uses an excessive number of Dutch angles in their work, it comes off as desperate and amateurish. However, watching this film reminded me that before the gratuitous use of the Dutch angle in Myspace profile pictures, it was a powerful tool used masterfully by filmmakers like Reed. Almost every shot in "The Third Man" is at an angle, albeit sometimes very slight. The effect is sometimes dizzying, but always disorienting, which despite intuition, does not hamper the film with unnecessary confusion, but builds the audience's sense of unease. In the same way, the lighting in this film is haunting and possesses an otherworldly strangeness. One is often frightened of the night because of the engulfing darkness, but Reed almost makes you more frightened of the light: buildings luminescent like glowing skeletons, shadows that loom larger than life, and just enough dark to conceal oneself in shambles of the crumbling city.

Perhaps even more poignant, is the music in this film. I must admit that I had never listened to zither music before, but I think now I will never be able to look at it the same way. The score (performed by Anton Karas) haunts you long after the film has ended (the first time I watched it, I was humming the theme for the next few days). The music, as Roger Ebert states, "is jaunty but without joy, like whistling in the dark. It sets the tone; the action begins like an undergraduate lark and then reveals vicious undertones." Could not have said it any better. The elements of this film, the acting, the cinematography, and the music, all unite in a perfection that is undeniable. Personally, I can find no fault.